Monthly Archives: January 2015

The play is gearing up! Twelve days until opening night. I’ve enjoyed every minute. And since I love clothes, I’ve had a great time with my costumes.

Our director Lisa has a keen eye. She found the eighties-style maternity dress (above) at a local thrift shop. It’s been fun to be pregnant again with the help of the pillow.

In the final scene, I’m seventy-seven years old. Artistic and spunky, my character, Jeri Neal McFeeley, keeps up her sense of style. I went to My Secret Closet, a consignment shop, to find her a jacket to wear.

I came home with a jacket and a necklace to match!

I also picked up a bracelet for Scene Three, when Jeri Neal, newly married, sports a black and white top with a black miniskirt. At the start of the scene, she flirts with her husband on the phone. “You sound like a mother speaking to a child,” Lisa said. “You need a sexier voice.”

That evening I practiced on Cliff. “Is this real or the play?” he asked.

In the last few weeks, I’ve had trouble deciding, too, when I’m Jeri Neal and when I’m my regular self. I’ll miss her terribly when the show is over.

But that’s a problem for later. Right now, back to the script for more studying! I’m still messing up some lines. While I study, I might just sport the frog slippers that Jeri Neal wears with her pink polka dot bathrobe (peeking out from beneath the maternity dress at the top).

But I want the people in the art to use real words. I tried to get a menopausal tip from this paintingby Rembrandt. I hoped the hand poised near her abdomen was a sign she had something to say girl-wise, but alas, she did not speak.

Rictrudis, the lovely lady who resides in statue-form at Duke’s Nasher Museum of Art, was French and lived in the seventh century. She married Adalbald, a knight. Together, they produced four children.

But into every life, rain must fall. Rictrudis’s parents weren’t happy with the marriage, so they murdered Adalbald. Yep. Talk about conflict with the in-laws.

But Rictrudis didn’t let such tragedy curtail her energetic spirit. Defying pressure to remarry, she started a convent at Marchiennes and became the first abbess.

I stood in front of her. Our trip to the Nasher was my first venture into the world after cancer surgery. I’d spent the last three weeks mostly on the couch. Tonight the museum felt so real, so colorful, so filled with treasure, so alive.

Speak to me, St. Rictrudis.

Rien. Nothing.

My French is tres mauvais, so if she had used words, I wouldn’t have caught them anyway.

But beyond words, the look on her face and Rictrudis’s story tells me this: When life gets tough, the tough keep going. I knew that.

But it’s helpful to be reminded by a wooden lady carved centuries ago.

To learn more about Rictrudis and the work done to restore her statue,check out the article from the Nasher Museum of Art.

I want to thank Barbara for inviting me to share my tale of woe about menopause.

What can I tell you about menopause that you don’t already know? My story, I’m sure, is a common one. It started with my missing a period here and there starting around age 40 (when my gynecologist advised me that I was just “getting old”), to the present day, when I’m 48 and not too happy with Mother Nature.

“I’m too young to be in menopause” I kept expressing to anyone who would listen! I was under the mistaken belief that only women over 50 had to think about menopause.

No one can prepare you for what happens to you when your period finally stops coming. You actually miss those horrible cramps, ruined underpinnings, Dorito binges and black rage weeks. At least with the menstrual cycle there was an end in sight. With menopause there is no hormonal drop at the end of the cycle. It’s crazy-time all the time.

I had gone to my mother as most of us do, for some answers. She told me “I don’t remember going through it”. Thanks, mom.

Back to square one. I was desperate to talk to someone about what was happening in my life. I would be in line at the bank or the grocery store, beads of sweat forming on my forehead and under my eyes, and look at the person behind me and say, “They should really turn up the air conditioning; it’s so warm in here.” Hello blank stare. It was January.

Garage sales were always a big draw for me. Lots of people milling around, there must be other menopausal women there that could commiserate with me! But the only comment I ever received was a disheartening “Oh yeah the hot flashes never go away.”

So alone with nowhere to turn! It’s been three years and countless buckets of sweat have escaped from my pores since my last period. I no longer look for answers from strangers. I have found that most women don’t want to talk about it. We are like a secret society that no one wants to belong to!

I tried to talk to my friends about menopause.They were still getting their periods, and they couldn’t understand what I was going through. They didn’t know how to respond. I could feel their fear and pity looking back at me. Secretly in my evil menopausal brain, I couldn’t wait until they entered menopause and then they would come crawling to me, looking desperately for the answers to those “why” questions.

Why so many hot flashes, why the crying without cause, the depression, why the loss of a sex drive, why the loss of feeling feminine?

I will look at them lovingly and say “I don’t remember.”

Jenifer Delabaris the divorced mother of one awesome son, who is 22 years old. She’s a student of Buddhism. She lives on Long Island and works as a legal secretary and has a degree in funeral service. Jennifer loves to read, learn, practice yoga and never stops asking questions.

From Barbara:I too, found that many women either didn’t remember menopause or didn’t have much to say when I asked them. That’s why I started this blog. I thank all of you for chiming in with your own experiences!